May 18, 2012

Very quietly, California utilities are threatening to undermine the dream of widespread clean energy in our state. If this happens, the state will lose jobs, our booming solar industry will suffer a major setback, and our progress at cutting emissions and displacing dirty energy will stop in its tracks.

At issue is a proposed ruling that the California Public Utilities Commission (CPUC) is slated to consider Thursday, May 24, which would increase the number of rooftop-solar installations that qualify for "net metering." Net meteringis like the rollover credits on your cellphone. It enables utility customers with solar panels connected to the grid to receive full credit for all of the electricity they produce. Excess power generated during sunny daylight hours gets fed back to the grid, and the customers earn a credit that helps offset their electricity costs during the times when they're using more power than they are generating.

Net metering is fair, and it's a critical part of the equation for making rooftop solar installations affordable for thousands of homeowners and small businesses. Thanks in large part to net metering, California has one gigawatt of customer-owned clean energy (over 100,000 rooftop solar systems). In addition, clean energy fed back onto the grid by net-metered systems makes it possible for California to turn off more "peaker" power plants -- the state's dirtiest and least-efficient -- which are typically powered by diesel or gas and sited near poor neighborhoods.

Most California consumers probably take it for granted that they should receive the full value of energy they generate and put back into the grid. Why would they choose to buy or lease rooftop solar panels if they will be forced to give away a significant percentage of the power they generate to the same utility that's sending them a bill every month?

But we can't take net metering for granted, because when California passed its net metering law in 1996, it included restrictions. Most alarmingly, under the current law, utilities can refuse to accept new net-metering customers altogether once the amount of power coming from those customers reaches five percent of "aggregate customer peak demand."

The utilities have chosen to interpret "aggregate customer peak demand" as meaning the highest overall system demand for energy in California history, which was on July 25, 2006 during a record heat wave that killed more than 100 people. Under that interpretation, California will reach its five percent net-metering cap at approximately 2.5 gigawatts -- which could happen as soon as early next year. The CPUC has proposed that a more sensible way to calculate "aggregate customer peak demand" is to add up (aggregate) the peak demand of every individual utility customer. If you calculate it that way, California will reach its net-metering cap at approximately 4.6 gigawatts of capacity. To put that in context, Governor Brown has said the state needs to reach 12 gigawatts of installed local clean energy sources such as rooftop solar panels, small wind turbines, and fuel cells by 2020.

Clean, renewable, locally generated energy is not a luxury for California nor, for that matter, the rest of the world. Failing to use clean energy translates to continuing to use dirty, polluting fossil fuels that threaten our health, our economy, and our climate. We cannot afford to stumble when we should be running as hard as we can to take full advantage of the energy that rains down on our rooftops day after day -- most of it wasted as we burn more coal, frack for more natural gas, and drill for more oil. California is a leader -- not just in the U.S., but in the world. It would be shameful if utility companies in this forward-looking state succeeded in making it harder for their customers to harvest the clean solar energy of the future.

The customers who want to buy or lease solar systems wouldn't be the only ones affected, either. At a time when the residential construction industry is still struggling, the boom in solar-rooftop installations has created thousands of badly needed jobs, which would be put in jeopardy.

Utility companies can't have it both ways. They cannot boast about how much they love clean energy while simultaneously working to undermine it. If the utilities don't like net metering (which, clearly, they don't), then the proper response is to propose something better -- not to sabotage the current system and derail the transition to clean, locally generated power.

May 14, 2012

In San Francisco we celebrated Bike to Work Day last week, but so many people are riding their bikes to work here that every day seems like Bike to Work Day. Bicycle ridership is up by 72 percent in the past six years. This has become a much more bicycle-friendly city during the past decade, but the upward trend is national, too: Bicycle commuting in the U.S. was up by 40 percent from 2000 to 2010, and in the largest "bicycle friendly" communities (as identified by the League of American Bicyclists), it was up by 77 percent.

That's great, but it's only scratching the surface of how biking could transform our country. Most people don't commute to work by bike. Most of us don't even use bikes for any of the relatively short trips we make to and from our homes. Forty percent of all car trips are to destinations less than two miles from home. If every American driver made just one of those trips each week on a bicycle instead of a car (going to church, for instance, or to the health club), we would collectively save nearly 2 billion gallons of gas in a year (not to mention about $7 billion).

So why don't we do it?

I suspect that if you asked people why they don't use a bike for those short trips, you'd hear one answer more than any other: "I just don't feel safe riding in traffic." That's understandable, because most of our roads and cities have been engineered for the safety and convenience of drivers -- not bicyclists. The solution is twofold: Better education for both drivers and cyclists on how to safely share the road and, even more important, an investment in reconfiguring our transportation infrastructure so that bicyclists and pedestrians can both feel and be safer.

We need to do this not just because it saves on gas, helps the environment, and makes us healthier. We need to do it because many Americans do not drive at all -- about 100 million as of 2009 (and that number will increase as our population ages). Walking or biking (as well as public transit) are the only ways these people can get somewhere on their own.

After decades of assuming that only cars matter, we really should be playing catch-up on behalf of other transportation modes. Currently, Americans make about 12 percent of all trips by biking or walking. So what if we invested 15 percent of our federal transportation funding on bicycle and pedestrian infrastructure? Too generous? How about 10 percent? Five percent? Believe it or not, five percent would still be more than three times as much as we're currently investing now, which is a measly 1.6 percent.

May 04, 2012

Odds are that you haven't heard of the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) agreement. And even if you've heard of it, I'm willing to bet you don't know what might be in it. That's because, although this massive new trade agreement could have profound implications for our environment, our health, and the rights of workers, it is being negotiated in almost complete secrecy.

The Sierra Club has worked on trade policy for nearly two decades for one simple reason: Trade rules have a huge impact on environmental protections. In 1998, for example, the World Trade Organization ordered the U.S. to weaken Endangered Species Act protections for sea turtles being killed in shrimp-fishing nets. And in an ongoing dispute, a U.S. corporation, Renco Group, is suing the government of Peru for $800 million under the free trade agreement between the U.S. and Peru. Why? Because Peru denied the corporation a third extension on its obligation to clean up pollutants and contaminants from a metallic smelter that Renco invested in. These are just two examples.

So when the United States and eight other Pacific Rim countries meet in Dallas later this month to work toward finalizing the TPP, which they're calling a "21st-century trade agreement," we'll be there, too. We want the negotiators to know: We are deeply concerned about both the process and the direction of these talks.

There's nothing wrong with encouraging trade. But let's do it right. A fair global trading system should improve the quality of life for all parties; it must include meaningful and enforceable environmental and labor standards that make it possible for communities to both provide for themselves and protect their environment. Because corporations are usually at the forefront of crafting trade agreements -- and civil society is not -- the end product primarily serves corporate interests -- often at the expense of the people whose lives they affect.

Exacerbating the problem, the scope of international trade agreements now extends far beyond the bounds of regulating trade. They also affect how products are actually made. For example, none of the trade pacts the U.S. has signed allows a country to give preference to products made with recycled content or to products made by workers who are paid decent wages with benefits.

In fact, virtually every free trade agreement we've negotiated since the 1994 North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) has contained language that lets foreign corporations sue governments directly -- in private and non-transparent tribunals -- for unlimited cash compensation over almost any domestic law (environmental or otherwise) that the corporation argues might hurt its profitability. The sole exception is our free trade agreement with Australia -- because the Australian government refused to allow its laws to be attacked by foreign corporations.

That was smart, because corporations have been quick to take advantage of this ability to attack a country's laws and protections. By the end of 2011, corporations (including Chevron, Exxon Mobil, Dow Chemical, and Cargill) had brought 450 disputes worth hundreds of millions of dollars against the governments of 89 countries. Many of those cases directly targeted environmental and other public interest laws.

For example, a Canadian mining company, Pacific Rim Mining Corp., through a U.S. subsidiary, is currently using the Central America Free Trade Agreement (CAFTA) to sue the government of El Salvador for $200 million for attempting to safeguard its people and environment from environmentally devastating mining practices. Just last year, Vattenfall, a Swedish energy company that controls two nuclear power plants in Germany, brought a case against Germany regarding that country's nuclear phaseout.

Unfortunately, unless we change how these agreements are negotiated, the TPP will certainly follow this same, deeply flawed model, which grants unprecedented rights to corporations. A true "21st-century trade agreement" should be looking to rein in corporate power -- not expand it. And it certainly shouldn't be negotiated in total secrecy behind closed doors.

The first step toward ensuring that we don't end up with a flawed Trans-Pacific Partnership is to bring these negotiations into the light of day. As former Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis said, "Sunlight is said to be the best of disinfectants." In Dallas, we'll deliver a petition, signed by thousands of Sierra Club members and supporters, that calls on the United States to publicly release all TPP proposals. Please add your name and tell the U.S. Trade Representative: We deserve to know exactly what it is that trade negotiators are proposing in our name.